SOMEWHERE: art or arse?

On the basis that less is more SOMEWHERE has way too much.

Director Sophia Coppola's latest film is a masterclass in slow moving emptiness. The camera doesn't just linger on scenes, it develops a long term relationship with the inactivity being captured by the lens. If we're lucky the camera performs a very slow reverse zoom but most of the time it just sits and stares at the nothing happening in front of it. This tone is set with the very first shot in which a Ferrari sports car repeatedly passes in front of the static camera as it laps a circular track in the desert. On the one hand you've got to admire Coppola for holding her nerve long after everyone watching has started screaming, but on the other hand does a director really want to alienate a large section of their audience so early in the film?
I found myself simultaneously irritated and hypnotised by the story's languid pace. The film should come with a warning not to operate heavy machinery immediately afterwards. By the time the final credits rolled all I was fit for was a long nap.
SOMEWHERE surveys similar terrain to Coppola's most famous film 'Lost in Translation' - the off-screen reality of life as a film star. Where Bill Murray was trapped in a Tokyo hotel far from home, Stephen Dorff as Johnny Marco is voluntarily exiled to the famous Chateau Marmont Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. His life while inbetween films is utterly devoid of meaningful activity. he spends his days lying on his bed in his hotel suite watching twin blonde pole dancers perform for his edification, smoking, and going out for aimless drives in his black Ferrari, occasionally following an attractive young female motorist who's pulled up next to him at the traffic lights. Marco's life is the dictionary definition of torpor. He nods off while watching the pole dancers and even manages to fall asleep with his head between the legs of a young woman he has all too easily seduced at one of the endless, joyless parties held in his suite.

This is a man in the apparently enviable position of having more money than he needs and all the time in the world to indulge himself, but barely able to function. He struggles to rouse himself when his young daughter Cleo (Elle Fanning) comes to stay with him. He takes her ice skating and to watch him play dice at a Vegas casino but there's rarely a sense of any real enthusiasm for what he's doing. The long lingering gaze of Coppola's camera heightens Marco's ennui but fails to create the real sense of atmosphere which was such a powerful element in 'Translation' and 'The Virgin Suicides.' Maybe the harsh California sunlight and soulless LA city landscape is partly to blame but the film feels as empty as Marco's existence. Those films were bona fide arthouse cinema whereas SOMEWHERE veers dangerously close to self indulgent arse territory.
The blame is completely Coppola's. Dorff is totally convincing as a Stephen Dorff type film star and 12 year old Fanning turns in a performance thankfully devoid of Hollywood child star theatrics and insincerity.
If like me you're an admirer of Coppola's work you'll want to see SOMEWHERE. Just prepare to be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you're one of those weird people who totally failed to appreciate the magnificence of 'Lost in Translation,' this film will only (and this time justifiably) reinforce your negative opinion of her style.

A SINGLE MAN: a visually striking and beautifully played drama of loss

It's no coincidence that every scene in A SINGLE MAN evokes those sumptuously staged and photographed ads for designer brand clothing and perfumes which proliferate in up-market magazines like Vanity Fair.

The film's writer-producer-director Tom Ford made his name as a fashion designer - most famously with Gucci - before taking an ambitious jump into moviemaking last year, and bringing with him a talent for creating striking visual images.
Beautiful is the word that comes closest to adequately describing not only his recreation of 1962 suburban Los Angeles but also the characters who inhabit it, and in particularly Colin Firth as George Falconer, an English professor struggling to come to terms with the sudden death of his long term partner, Jim, in a car crash. 
Ford plays with light and colour, alternating both from one scene to the next to reflect George's emotions and state of mind as he goes about his daily routine and daydreams about happier times with Jim. His memories of a passionate past are flooded with vivid reds and yellows which stand in stark contrast to the dark browns and washed out skin tones of his solitary present. This colour-coded signalling of love and loneliness reaches a not-so-subtle climax when George finds himself unexpectedly seduced by one of his students. In their early scenes together the young man radiates rich golden hues while his teacher appears almost ghostly. Although Ford probably makes a little too much use of this technique it never quite reaches the point of annoyance.
But what makes A SINGLE MAN so much more than simply one hundred minutes of glossy and extremely appealing eye candy is Colin Firth. He garnered a richly deserved Oscar nomination for his magnificent portrayal of a buttoned down, middle-aged, meticulously correct Englishman abroad whose well ordered life has lost all meaning with the death of his lover. 

Firth's familiar screen persona as a rather stiff and terribly English gentleman whose very formal exterior conceals a passionate heart works well for him here, playing a man who hides his sexuality in plain sight from a disapproving society. George makes several loaded references to the persecuted minorities in our midst while teaching his literature class, and it's no coincidence that he and Jim have designed a house for themselves filled with glass walls. It's not particularly subtle but it is effective.  
Watching A SINGLE MAN I was reminded of Sophia Coppola's feature-length directorial debut with "The Virgin Suicides." Both films display a very unique and engaging style of storytelling, and create an impression which lingers long after the final credits have rolled. Coppola's subsequent films have confirmed she really is a talented and original filmmaker. It'll be interesting to see whether Tom Ford can do the same.